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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JamesonCourage" data-source="post: 6114826" data-attributes="member: 6668292">Geez, at least put "JC" in there if you're not going to quote me! That way other people don't get blamed for my posts.You can assume, and you'll probably always be right. Same thing for thing what is commonly in cities. But I do stress "probably", here.Not in my game, no.Depending on campaign setting, of course. And I don't just mean my own special world, I mean even things like Dark Sun would probably not work the way you've described.But, you've said that if we're following the guidelines as they've been communicated. I agree. Was anything communicated about the desert? The city? If so, the players can potentially use either description. They may very well know of nomads (not that they'd have a reason to interact with them unless the GM gives them a reason to- but I'll get to that below).Once you know of the temple, yeah. Or the city, even. You don't know these things until the GM communicates them to you. But, more on that below.Depends on what you know about it, doesn't it? Depends on the context. In a dwarven city, you're probably not assuming there's an elf district. Depending on the setting, though, you might assume there's a gnome district. Context is necessary before we make assumptions of what's in the city.If you're playing for a group with your point of view (which is perfectly okay with me), then I'd ask this question about the desert. If the GM runs a group where the siege is relevant to the goal, wouldn't he try to make the desert encounters be relevant?Indeed. The same goes for the desert encounters you want to skip, sight unseen.So, he'd make it relevant. Like he'd do for the desert.What? No, that's not true. Take a play style where the game is a bit more "in flux" than it is sandboxy. Okay, so, if you walk through the desert, you'll encounter the nomads / refugees / mercenaries, with some information on the temple in the city (some of them are priests that fled), foreshadowing a siege. If you skip it and end up at the city, you'll hear a beggar predicting doom and foreshadowing an entirely different event related to the temple.It's not how I play, but my understanding of different play styles means that this style isn't uncommon. Improvising interesting and relevant complications on the fly, depending on where the players turn the focus of the PCs. I'm just not following your logic here.Right?At any rate, I wanted to touch on player reaction / action to GM stuff. You like cities because you can assume stuff about them and interact with them. That makes sense.But, those assumptions are based on something. Standard D&D tropes, specific campaign world (published or homebrew), GM's guidelines, whatever. When you're playing in the campaign with those assumptions, you're basically redirecting the focus to things he puts in your path. Yes, you decide to go to the city and bring the focus there, but he made up the city. Sure, you can decide that you want to deal with the temple in the city, and bring the focus there, but he made up the temple. And on it goes.The fact that the GM made up the nomad encounter is no different than him making up anything else. The difference is who is bringing focus to it. That's why the disagreement of the siege confuses me to some degree. You don't like the desert because there's nothing to bring the focus to; the GM has to do that for you. However, the siege, from where I'm sitting, is the same. The GM brought the focus to it.And, it goes further. Yes, you can interact with the leaders now. Or the guards on the walls of the castle. Or the army. You can bring the focus to places you want to, now. However, can't you do that with the nomad / refugee / mercenary scenario? You can talk to the city folk, or the nomads, or the mercenaries, or you can ignore them and move past them, bringing the focus to the city, again.And, on top of that, both scenarios are currently relevant to PC goals. The siege is having an effect on the city, and the nomads / refugees / mercenaries can give information, or potentially supplies, or you can even hire the mercenaries away from the city folk on your way to the city and the siege."But, nothing in the desert can be too terribly relevant", for whatever reason. And that's what's confusing me. As always, play what you like <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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